THE ROMAN EMPIRE INTO THE BREACH -- "Search for the Real Parents of My Soul" -- continues

THE ROMAN EMPIRE INTO THE BREACH

“Search for the Real Parents of My Soul” - continued

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© November 14, 2014

NOTE:

We now move out of the Old Testament and Edward Gibbon’s assessment, along with others, into the New Testament and this new religion, Christianity.  The irony were it not for the efficacy of the Roman Empire conjecture might hold that Christianity would never have gained its prominence.  Keep this in mind as we move forward.

*     *     *

There is a thread that goes through Western civilization that is so fine that while it knits the past with the future it is easy to miss how it has been weaved into a single fabric, which is today commonly called “the West.” 

As we have seen thus far, the Hellenistic tradition of Greece greatly influenced the Judaic culture, especially as it relates to the Pharisees, and that influence continued with the Rise of Rome, making it the world’s greatest empire (Everitt 2012).

The best estimates of the beginning of the Roman Empire are with the accession of Augustus as the first emperor in 27 B.C.  Others say the date of Rome’s foundation was sometime in the eighth century, possibly 753 B.C. (Everitt, 2012)

Rome is the discernible connection between the Old and New Testament for now we are introduced to the clash of cultures between the pagan polytheism of Rome with the monotheism of Judaism, and the cult of Jesus, which will become Christianity as we move into the New Testament. 

*     *     *

During the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, Judea had several Roman Prefects according to Josephus: Coponius (6 A.D.), Marcus Ambibulus (7 A.D.), Annius Rufus (14-17 A.D.), “Valerius Gratus (17-27 A.D.), and Pontius Pilate (27-36), who ruled on the crucifixion of Jesus.

Scholars have provided estimates for the year of the crucifixion in the range 30–33 AD, with the majority of modern scholars favoring the date April 7, 30 AD. Another popular date is Friday, April 3, 33 AD

The crucifixion of Jesus is recorded in the New Testament, Christians believing Him to be the Son of God as well as the Messiah.  He was arrested, tried, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally crucified. Collectively referred to as the Passion, Jesus' suffering and redemptive death by crucifixion are the central aspects of Christian theology concerning the doctrines of salvation and atonement. 

His crucifixion is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament Epistles, attested to by other ancient sources, and is established as a historical event confirmed by non-Christian sources (Eddy & Boyd (2007).

*     *     *

This sets the stage for the appearance of an irascible figure of no apparent consequence, a figure that will clash with Jesus’ disciple, Peter, and Jesus’ brother, James, over the direction of the new sect, throwing the modest movement off course to split from Judaism and become a new religion, challenging the Roman Empire.  This nondescript man was Saul from Tarsus (Ruden 2010). 

Saul, a Hellenistic Pharisee and tentmaker witnessed the stoning to death of St. Stephen, as he held the garments of the stoners, his associates, whose job was to search out and persecute members of the Jesus cult.  Witnessing this stoning, which author Sarah Ruden shows is a slow miserable death, proved shattering to this young man (Ruden 2010). 

Later, on his way to Damascus, he was confronted by the full horror of his human limitations.  “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” the voice asked (Acts 9:4). 

He lived in humanity, and came to realize the hurt done to the Jesus followers, like that done to Jesus in human form, now registered as an assault on God.  He was instantly converted and changed his name from Saul to Paul, and became “the greatest theological genius of all time,” and arguably the lone architect of the new religion, Christianity, as Christian doctrine came not from Jesus, nor from any of Jesus’ “twelve apostles,” but from the pen of Paul of Tarsus (Ruden 2010).

*     *     *

The Roman Empire fell into this breach, an empire that rose modestly gaining momentum over time into the colossus that it became. 

Some historians regard the Roman Empire as beginning with the accession of Augustus as the first emperor in 27 B.C.  Others recognized that although Rome began as a republic, the period from the legendary founding of the city of Rome in 753 B.C. through the fall of what became known as the Western Empire in A.D. 476 represents a continuous history of a culture we call the Roman Empire.

That said starting in 19 B.C., Augustus ushered in a conservative revolution that focused on moral renewal of the Roman state in part by bringing back customs from the past.  He enacted reforms concerning religion and social and sexual behavior that directly affected personal freedom as well as what it meant to be a citizen under the empire.

Augustus interpreted the period of civil war prior to his reign as immoral in which Romans had neglected the gods in deference to their personal luxury and pleasure.  This aside, his achievements rested with his popularity with the army, securing the borders, improving empire administration, and developing a well-planned method of succession.

The defeat of Mark Antony at the “Battle of Actium” (31 B.C.), Octavian now Augustus secured his power.  Augustus then cut the size of the army, but retained the goodwill of his disbanded troops by granting them full citizenship, the ability to vote, immunity from tribute, opportunities to relocate throughout the empire, and retirement bonuses for 20 years of service.

After his death in 14 A.D., his stepson Tiberius was easily accepted as emperor being keen to rule much as his father had, continuing the Augustus tradition, while encouraging Romans to move eastward quietly expanding the Roman influence.

This swelled the Roman presence in Judea during the reign of Tiberius (14-37 A.D.), Caligula (37-41 A.D.), Claudius (41-54 A.D.), and Nero (54-68 A.D.), a period historians claim of emperor eccentric steadiness.  Although each had strengths, none would recreate the golden age of the first emperor’s reign.  Instead, they are remembered for their faults and oddities, from madness to stuttering, from tyranny of Nero to his suicide.

“Pax Romana” (27 B.C. to A.D. 180) represented two centuries of peace that commenced with the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.) and the death 207 years later (180 A.D.) of Marcus Aurelius.   It was a period of internal order and indisputable dominance abroad, similar to the “American Century.”  Historian Anthony Everitt, however, finds that comparison between Rome and the United States ludicrous if not dangerous (Everitt 2012).

Rome had its “New Age,” as well, ushered in by Augustus in 19 B.C. in what proved to be a conservative revolution.  He focused on the moral renewal of the Roman state in part by bringing back customs from the past.  He also enacted reforms concerning religion and social and sexual behavior that directly affected personal freedom as well as the definition of what constituted a Roman citizen. 

At the same time, there were mounting delusions of grandeur.  This included a sense of invincibility and destiny, as well as a preoccupation with empire showing little alarm at increasing dysfunction at home. 

Rome failed to recognize emerging socioeconomic problems such as immigration as diverse ethnic groups poured into Rome, resisting assimilation into the Roman culture, instead becoming wards of the state contributing little to the majesty of Rome’s established greatness. 

In retrospect, the seeds of the decline were planted in the birth of the Christian Empire (National Geographic 2014).  By the fourth century A.D., Christians were integrated into all facets of Roman society, including the military, judicial, and educational establishments, while comprising only 8 percent of the population.

Troubled by this mounting influence, in 303 A.D., Emperor Diocletian ordered that all Christians renounce their beliefs and sacrifice to Roman gods, starting the final Roman persecution of the church.  

A decade later, following the “Edict of Milan,” the practice of Christianity was as accepted as that of any other religion.  Rome, however, would not become a fully Christian empire until after the fall of the Second Tetrarchy (i.e., four rulers), and Constantine’s reign (National Geographic 2014). 

*     *     *

Emperor Constantine, after a battle field conversion, made Christianity the state religion and prohibited the worshiping of all Roman gods in 313 A.D. 

Once established, few could have foreseen that this act, with the death of Constantine in 337 A.D., would mark the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire (Womersley 1994).

A series of forces were at work, some familiar, some new, which combined to make Rome’s downfall almost inevitable.

Without new territory, the empire lost revenue, burdening an economy that was already straining under the enormous cost of maintaining a vast army, a welfare system at home, saddled with bureaucratic lethargy, and a series of emperors without the force of personality to lead, who instead were likely to be entrenched within their imperial palaces, often located outside of Rome, along with corruption in the Senate, leaving the government marginalized in the day-to-day conduct of business. 

The tension between the East and West segments of the Roman Empire had become increasingly destructive as emperors no longer cooperated and instead undermined each other.  

Barbarian tribes from the north administered the coup de grace, as some traditional tribal nemeses migrated into the empire when the Huns invaded Europe, while Visigoths and Germanic tribes took advantage of the power vacuums and attacked Rome itself.

Rome’s empire had grown so large that its borders became harder to defend.  Meanwhile, in the east, a new empire, the Sassanids, overran Rome’s traditional enemy the Parthians. Tribes such as the Goths from the Baltic regions and Alamanni from the upper Rhine invaded from the north.  Rebels within and without the empire annexed territory and broke away from Rome (National Geographic 2014).  The western empire started to unravel with the death of Constantine in 337 A.D. with Rome giving way completely to Byzantium in the east in 476 A.D.., which marked the end of the Roman Empire.

*     *     *

Edward Gibbon devoted more than a decade to his magisterial History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789), which opens this famous sentence:

In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

The empire was at its peak, thanks to the spirit of moderation with which Augustus had imbued it.  Gibbon praised Augustus’ moderation content to rest with the republic’s conquests, having no inclination to subdue the entire world.  Gibbon continues:

Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover, that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms (Womersley 1994).

             

Gibbon asked the questions: 

What caused the empire to fall from those heights?  The barbarian invasions?  The rise of Christianity to the status of a state religion?  

Yes, he concluded, but that was only the most important aspect of a more encompassing cause.  He put his views in a section titled, “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”:

The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. (Gibbon 2007)

Too much ambition, too much prosperity, too much power in the hands of the Praetorian guards, too many provincials bearing the name of “Roman,” who knew nothing of the Roman spirit.  These were the causes, he concluded, of the destruction.

Chapter 15 and 16 of Gibbon’s work are immoderate, as the historian makes no attempt to express himself in politically correct terms.  The early Christians, he assessed, were simple and mild folks, but from the first they preached and practiced an intolerant exclusivity.  

Whereas the pagans stood ready to add another god to the pantheon, the followers of Christ insisted that theirs was the true and only God.  

Gibbon, a nonbeliever, viewed religion of any kind the sanctuary for the ignorant and superstitious masses only.  At the same time, he recognized the social usefulness of religion, but only when it was polytheistic, tolerant, moderate in its enthusiasm and modest in its claims.

Thanks to Paul, the Apostle, Christianity was none of these things.  Christians were immoderately passive.  They discouraged active virtues and buried the last remnants of the military spirit in the cloister.  Gibbon held a special grievance for the sacred indolence of the monks who he claimed embraced a servile and effeminate age (Womersley 1994).

Yet, he viewed Christians as immoderately pugnacious, even within their own camp, zealotry could not be held in check.  Between the bishops in Rome and the bishops in the provinces, there was a continuing cold war.

Like almost all Christians, Gibbon observed, the bishops were fanatics who for a variety of reasons, zeal, the promise of another world, miraculous claims, rigid virtue, or church organization, were able to transform themselves from a persecuted minority into an intolerant majority. 

Christians had been persecuted, Gibbon admitted, but the pagan treatment was less intolerable than many believed.  He conceded Nero may have carried things too far.  But he reminded the reader that once Christians came to power they were “no less diligently employed in displaying the cruelty, than in imitating the conduct of their pagan adversaries.” (Womersley 1994)

His antagonism to Christian doctrine spilled over into the Jewish faith, leading to charges of anti-Semitism:

From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives; and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of legions against a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but also of humankind. (Womersley 1994)

Emperor Julian, called the Apostate, attempted in vain to restore polytheistic paganism from the monotheism of Christianity as well as Judaism.  Julian was also known as Julian the Philosopher, and was emperor from 361-363 A.D. with strong Hellenistic leanings.  

A member of the Constantinian dynasty, Julian became Caesar over the western provinces by order of Constantius II in 355 and in this role campaigned successfully against the Alamanni and Franks. Most notable was his crushing victory over the Alamanni in 357 at the Battle of Argentoratum despite being outnumbered.

In 360 in Lutetia (Paris) he was acclaimed Augustus by his soldiers, sparking a civil war between Julian and Constantius. Before the two could face each other in battle, however, Constantius died, after naming Julian as his rightful successor. 

In 363, Julian embarked on an ambitious campaign against the Sassanid Empire in the east. Though initially successful, Julian was mortally wounded in battle and died shortly thereafter.

Julian was a man of unusually complex character: he was "the military commander, the theosophist, the social reformer, and the man of letters"  He was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, and it was his desire to bring the Empire back to its ancient Roman values in order to save it from dissolution.  

He purged the top-heavy state bureaucracy and attempted to revive traditional Roman religious practices at the cost of Christianity. His rejection of Christianity in favor of Neoplatonic paganism caused him to be called Julian the Apostate, or "a person who has abandoned the religion and principles" of the (Christian) church.  He was the last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty.

Unlike Constantine, Julian was moderate and tolerant, “the only hardship,” according to Gibbon, “which he inflicted on the Christians, was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow subjects, whom they stigmatized with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics” (General Observations 2007).

Julian was a true believer in the pagan gods and not a philosophic skeptic concerning all religions.  In Gibbon’s view, he should have emulated those who had allowed philosophy to purify “their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstitions” and who therefore rejected Christianity.  He was speaking of  Seneca, the elder, and younger Pliny, Tacitus, Plutarch, Galen, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, whose death in 207 A.D. marked the end of Rome’s golden period.

As point of reference, Gibbon is considered to be a son of the European Enlightenment and this is reflected in his famous verdict on the history of the Middle Ages: 

"I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion." 

However, politically, he aligned himself with the conservative Edmund Burke's rejection of the democratic movements of the time as well as with Burke's dismissal of the "rights of man."

Gibbon's work has been praised for its style, his piquant epigrams and its effective irony.  Unusually for the 18th century, Gibbon was never content with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible.  With reference to primary sources, Gibbon is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians.

In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, this history is considered unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive. Whatever its shortcomings, "The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire" is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period.

Having recounted his melancholy tale of Rome’ decline and fall, Gibbon asked if it contained a warning to the present.  Might Europe one day suffer a similar fate?  Incredibly, he thought not:

The abuses of tyranny are restrained by the mutual influence of fear and shame; republics have acquired order and stability; monarchies have imbibed the principles of freedom, or, at least, of indoctrination; and some sense of honor and justice is introduced into the most defective constitutions by the general manner of the times.  In peace, the progress of knowledge and industry is accelerated by the emulation of so many active rivals in war, the European forces are exercised by temperate and indecisive contests (Gibbon, General Observations 2007).

The Old Testament ends with this assessment.  We now move into THE GENERAL SETTING OF CHRISTIANITY IN HISTORY

*     *     *

NOTES OF REFERENCE:

THE PRE-CHRISTIAN COURSE OF MANKIND

"BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS"

1.           Matthew 5:17

2.           John 1:1,3; Ephesians 3:9; Hebrews 1:2

THE RETURN FROM BABYLON

3.           Durant, page 545.

4.           Jacob Z. Latourette, RABBINIC ESSAYS, Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, 1951, page 13-14

5.           Heinrich Graetz, HISTORY OF THE JEWS, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1894, Volume 1, pp. 406-407

6.           This is described in Josephus’ ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS, Book XI, Chapter X, Parts 5, 6.  The flavor of this piece is to be followed throughout this section.  The Word of God and God’s Law are to be taken as fact.  This is not necessarily the position of the author.  It is, however, clearly the position of the principals involved.

A NEW WAY OF LIFE

7.           Daniel 8:22

8.           Hamilton, pp. 2-53

SYNAGOGUE NO LONGER IN AUTHORITY

9.           R. Travere Herford, TALMUD AND APOCRYPHA, Soncine Press, London, 1033, p. 77

100 TEARS OF POLEMAIC RULE

10.         Charles Foster Kent, HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1940, p. 320

11.         Opt. Cid, Lauterbach, p. 196

12.         Ibid, p. 196

13.         THE REPUBLIC OF PLATA, translated with introduction and notes by Francis MacDonald Cornford, Oxford University Press, 1956.  See “A Proof of Immortality” (Plato, pp. 341-344).  As pointed out in the text, most have assumed that the doctrines of traditional Christianity have come from the Bible.  Compare, for example, present day teachings on the immortality of the soul with what Plato wrote in the “Phaedo” (GREAT DIALOGUES OF PLATA, Mentor Books, 1956):

“… The soul is shown to be immortal, and since immortal, indestructible … Do we believe there is any such thing as death?  To be sure.  And is this anything but the separation of the soul and body?  And being dead is the attainment of this separation, when the soul exists, in herself, and separate from the body, and the body is parted from the soul.  That is death…Death is merely the separation of soul and body.” 

14.         The Jewish Encyclopedia

15.         Opt. Cid., Kent, pp. 324-325

16.         . McClintock and Strong, CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE, Volume I, pp. 271-272; and Maccabees, Chapter 4

17.         Daniel 11:29-31

THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

18.         Josephus, ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS, The Jewish Publication Society of America, New York, 1911, Book XII, Chapter VI, Part 2

19.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p. 205

20.         Opt. Cid., Herford, pp. 64-65

21.         Nicholas de Large (ed.), THE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, Aurum Press, London, 1997; Paul E. Sigmund, NICHOLAS DE CUSA (LARGE) and MEDIEVAL POLITICAL THOUGHT, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1963

22.         John Ma, “Re-Examining the Hanukkah,” The Marginalia Review of the Book, July 9, 2013

THE SANHEDRIN

23.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p. 203

24.         Numbers 11:16

25.         Malachi 2:7

26.         Deuteronomy 18: 1-7; Ezekiel  44:23; Deuteronomy 33:10

LAY TEACHERS REJECT PREMISE

27.         The reference for this section is the Torah, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, PA, 1962

SO, WHAT WAS GOD’S WAY, ANYWAY?

28.         Nehemiah 8:8

ENTER THE PHARISEES

29.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p 209

30.         Proverbs 14:12; 16:25

THE SADDUCEES

31.         Deuteronomy 17:8-13

32.         Opt. Cid., Josephus, XIII, x, 6

33.         Paul Maier, Josephus, The Essential Writings, 1988

34.         Abraham Geiger, JUDAISM AND ITS HISTORY, University Press of America, 1985

THE ROLE OF THE TEMPLE

35.         Sadducees (Wikipedia)

36.         Karl Gutzkow, “The Sadducees in Amsterdam,” 1834

37.         Pesher Nahum, DEAD SEA SCROLL 4Q169

38.         Mishnah, Midrash (Wikipedia)

39.         Acts of the Apostles

LAY TEACHERS JUSTIFY THE PEOPLE’S ERROR

40.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p 195

41.         Torah

42.         Opt. cid., Hereford, p 66

43.         Isaiah 58:1

44.         Jeremiah 23:21-22

45.         Isaiah 30:10

PAGAN CUSTOMS CALLED JEWISH!

46.         Jeremiah 10:2

47.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p 211

48.         Christmas is not of a biblical nature at all.  The festival had its origin hundreds of years before the birth of Christianity.  “Christmas” customs were being observed by almost the whole Western world centuries before Christ.  In any case, hardly any early church scholars believed that Christ was born on December 25.  In fact, there were all types of guesses by the men of the fourth and fifth centuries, and almost everyone disagreed (see Smith’s “Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Volume I, p 358).

The truth seems to be that no one knew or knows when Christ was born.  The Gospels say nothing as to the day of his birth.  It would seem that if God had wanted Christians to celebrate His birthday there would be little disputing the date.

Only two instances of birthday celebrations are in the Bible, and they refer to evil men.  See Genesis 40:20 where Pharaoh’s birthday was observed, and then in Matthews 14:6-10, where Herod’s  birthday party is described along with the beheading of John the Baptist.  Only heathens celebrated their birthdays in Bible times.

Easter, incidentally, is an English word, which has a common origin with the German word “Ostern” ( Eostur, Eastur, Ostara, Ostar).  To the Norsemen this meant the season of the rising or growing sun, the season of new birth.

The word was used by ancient Europeans to designate the “Feast of New Life” in the spring, which is to say, the word long antedates Christianity.  Originally, it referred to the celebration of the spring sun, which had its birth in the East and brought new life upon the earth.  Easter, then, antecedes Christianity by centuries. 

Practically all of the major Christian holy days evolved from pagan rituals, or were founded upon pagan myths including the virgin birth of Jesus, three gods in one person (Father, Son and Holy Ghost in Christianity), as well as the death and resurrection.  This is intriguing because the social consciousness of Christians, despite the evidence to the contrary, is that these theological concepts were unique to Christianity when clearly they were and are not (see Joseph Campbell’s “Myths to Live By,” 1972; “The Mythic Image,” 1974, “The Hero of a Thousand Faces,” (1949).

49.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p 211

50.         Deuteronomy 31:24

ORAL LAW GAINS ACCEPTANCE

51.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p 211

52.         Ibid, p 209

53.         Acts of the Apostles 23:8

NEW LAWS OF THE PHARISEES

54.         Opt. Cid., Hereford, p 71

55.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p 229

56.         The Talmud, Temurah, 156, Yebamoth 72b, 1963

57.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, p 212

58.         Nehemiah 8:8

59.         Malachi 3:6

60.         Jose the Permitter, THE JEWISH QUARTERLY, 1916

61.         Opt. Cid., Talmud, Abodah Zarah 37b

62.         Opt. Cid., Lauterbach, 219

63.         Ibid, p 218

64.         Mark 7:7

THE PROSBUL OF HILLEL

65.         Deuteronomy 15:2

66.         Werblowsky and Wigoder, THE ENCLYCOPEDIA OF THE JEWISH OF THE JEWISH RELIGION, “Prosbul,” p 312 (1955)

67.         Deuteronomy 15:9

68.         Mathew 15:6

69.         Proverbs 3:5

70.         Proverbs 14:12; 16:25

A PRIORI

71.         Deuteronomy 15:9

72.         Eric Hoffer, FIRST THINGS, LAST THINGS, Harper & Row, New York, 1965, p 43

73.         NIETZSCHE by Walter Kaufmann, A Vintage Giant, New York, 1950, p 43

74.         Deuteronomy 5:29

75.         Jeremiah 17:9

76.         Joshua 24:19

77.         Deuteronomy 30:6

78.         Romans 10:2

79.         THE TALMUD

80.         H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1948, pp 269-270

THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE BREACH

81.         Anthony Everitt, THE RISE OF ROME, Random House, New York, 2012

82.         Ibid, Everitt, Time Line, pp 405-416r 

83.         Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, THE JESUS LEGEND: A CASE OF THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE SYNOPTIC JESUS, Tradition Baker Academic, ISBN 0-8010-3114-1 page 127 states that it is now "firmly established" that there is non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus).

84.         THE RISE & FALL of the ROMAN EMPIRE, National Geographic, 2014, pp 57-63

85.         Sarah Ruden, PAUL AMONG THE PEOPLE: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time, Pantheon Books, New York, 2010, Preface: Who Was Paul?

86.         Ibid, Preface

87.         Acts of the Apostles 9:4

88.         Opt. Cid., Ruden, xviii-xix

89.         Opt. Cid., Everitt, Preface

90.         National Geographic, THE RISE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, Washington, D.C., 2014, pp 117-120

91.         Ibid, pp 109-115

92.         Ibid, pp 96-101

93.         David P. Womersley, History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, Penguin Classics, New York, 1994, p 31

94.         Edward Gibbon, “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire of the West, Internet, accessed February 12, 2007.

95.         Ibid

96.         Opt. Cid, Womersley, pp 515, 518, 577

97.         D. M. Low, History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, abridged version, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1960, Chapter XVI, p. 516 (quotation).  pp 203-205. 

Gibbon saw Christianity as a contributor to the fall and to stability of the empire:

"As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.

Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country.

Yet party-spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive

obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their frequent assemblies and perpetual correspondence maintained the communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the Gospel was strengthened, though confirmed, by the spiritual alliance of the Catholics.

The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age; but if superstition had not afforded a decent retreat, the same vices would have tempted the unworthy Romans to desert, from baser motives, the standard of the republic.

Religious precepts are easily obeyed which indulge and sanctify the natural inclinations of their votaries; but the pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect, effects on the barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman Empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors." (chap. 39)

98.         Opt. Cid., General Observations, p 876

99.         Ibid

LOVE AND RESPECT -- WORDS OF SIGNIFICANCE AND CONSEQUENCE!

LOVE AND RESPECT

WORDS OF SIGNIFICANCE AND CONSEQUENCE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© November 11, 2014

OVERVIEW

They say. “Love makes the world go around.”  But what is love and what do we mean when we say I love you? 

Is love an instinct or a condition?  Is it a quality of our essence or an acquired tastes?   Is love limited to words or a precept of behavior?

Clearly, the best of human actions involves a spate of dissembling.  We cannot help ourselves from constant lying.  Unable or unwilling to confront these flawed ironies of our nature, virtue can easily be reduced to vice, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly. 

For this refusal to get inside what we mean by love we fail to recognize the limits of our capacity to be loving. 

We treat love as a commodity of instrumental (what it can do for us) or terminal value (what it means to us). 

In both cases, our human temperament finds love fragmented precarious in its configuration and power to differentiate good from evil, right from wrong, the desirable from the undesirable, or what is in our best interest and in the interest of significant others.

Of all human limitations man’s animal nature sets limits on his efforts to love, display dignity, forgive, order and elevate himself above his inherent selfishness, obstinacy, violence and inclination to self-hatred or self-deprecation.   Alas, the hardest person for us to love is ourselves, and we can thank our culture for that.

Man is an irrational being with a conscience looking for the modesty to admit that his natural interests are not always knowable or understandable to him.  Decency and civility are often buried in unsullied arrogance or hostility to others, which is actually a display of self-contempt.

Or could it be delusions of superiority (I have answers for you) that result in moral turpitude, or the opposite of what was intended with love in the first place? 

PENETRATING THE PHILOSOPHICAL THICKET OF LOVE

We are familiar with conditional and unconditional love.

A parent with a strong superego (Freud’s “Morality Principle”) would most likely display conditional love, or what the person should do or should not do; in other words, how the person is expected to behave not according to the person’s own lights, but the value system of that parent.

On the other hand, a parent with a healthy ego (Freud’s “Reality Principle”) would be inclined to display unconditional love, or love that understands that to be human is to be flawed, and to fail is part of nature, and that there is no other recourse than for a person to find this out for him or herself, which means to accept that reality and to deal with it accordingly.

Where both conditional and unconditional love can result in warp behavior, and drive the offspring into deeper confusion and greater danger is in doing too much (conditional love) for that person leading to excess, or too little (unconditional love) failing to steer the young person in the right direction. 

The right direction is a tentative destination as it involves the individual being in a climate where freedom and individualism are meant to display a modicum of moderation, are guided by a reasonable level of prudence, and do no harm to that person or to others.

Fear is the culprit that complicates matters.  It can drive a conditionally loved child to despair as that child is bombarded with a constant cacophony of negative forebodings, which paradoxically, can drive that child into becoming obsessed with behaviors most feared. 

Unbridled confidence that the child will do the right thing is the offender that drives unconditional love to unreality and nightmarish behavior as existence is without walls, road signs or limits.

 

It is no accident conditional love can lead to behaviors of societal shame. 

This is the subject of James Cleugh’s “Love Locked Out” 1963) where he shows a disproportionate number of young Catholic women go into prostitution or are compulsively promiscuous as a result of the stringent puritanical nature of their Catholic religious training, where the normal biological developmental functions of young women are ignored or denied.  It may well be a factor in the perverted behavior of celibate Catholic priests leading to child abuse.

Many parents unwittingly chase their children into sin and shame by acting the epitome of perfection sharing little or no sense of their own psychosexual confusion in the process of growing up, or indeed, of acting as pure as the falling snow, when a little candor might lead to a child’s self-tolerance and self-acceptance rather than thinking him or herself being spoiled good for simply feeling, thinking, imagining, and behaving in an exploratory nature of their being.

Unconditional love, in one sense, is comforting in that the person benefitting from such love knows that no matter what he or she does they can “come home again.”

Where the confusion occurs with unconditional love is that the young person is given little or no guidance, develops no rationale or prudence much less moderation in behavior knowing that parental love will always be there to rescue them from themselves. 

We have had at least three generations of this unconditional love, and as a result we have few mature adults in the conduct of society’s business. 

We see this immaturity displayed with implicit justifications, whatever the circumstances, from the President of the United States to the Chief Executive Officers of our major corporations, to the leaders of our academic and religious institutions, to the behavior of professional athletes, on and on.  Unconditional love as led to the “spoiled brat syndrome.”

Indeed, unconditional adulations, which is a form of love, finds a professional athlete making $5 million a year shoplifting a couple pairs of jockey shorts and a cologne, and fined $50,000 for the offense.  A Heisman Trophy winner for college football, walks out of a supermarket with a package of crab legs, as if entitled.  This young man, who seems constantly in some kind of trouble, has been coddled and loved unconditionally in his twenty years of life because he is a most gifted athlete.  He is being destroyed by this adulation, and as a consequence, may never grow up.

There is a man in my acquaintance who puts no restrictions on his children’s love.  They are not bad children as it turns out, but one is fortunately guided by her own lights with some authority, while the other seems to be lost in a little boy’s wonderland of electronic games that at the age, 20, should have been put aside or outgrown. 

This man, because of his success, has a beautiful lakefront home and two wave runners, a boat and other toys to be expected in such surroundings.   The two wave runners were stolen by two boys, but within a few days these lads were apprehended by the police with felony charges.

The boy’s father came to this man and asked that the charges be dropped with this rejoinder, “Don’t you remember when you were a boy?  Things like this happen.”

He did as the father wished, and the boys, who are criminals, got away with it this time with no learning taking place.

HOW DOES RESPECT RELATE TO LOVE?

Love can be conditional or unconditional, but respect can only be earned.  You can love members of your family or extended family, but that love will not always be accompanied with respect of that you can be sure. 

You can faint respect subconsciously but even the most forgiving of nature’s cannot abide someone who consistently lies about everything, is always late for appointments, seldom follows through with  promised action, borrows money or things and “forgets” to pay the money back or return the items borrowed. 

This person can be a mother or father, brother or sister, cousin or best friend, but after a while, and it differs from person to person, the respect withers and dies, and that person is avoided as much as possible. 

The irony is that the person is likely to still be loved, but not respected, preferring that the person be seen seldom if at all.

Respect, as it turns out, and this is a surprise to most people, is that respect is more powerful and more magnetic as well as more consequential than love.

Love, either conditionally or unconditionally is given freely.  Respect is only experienced when it is earned and not before.

Now, you might argue that is not true.  I respect my pastor, my teacher, my boss, my president, but again, it is not respect until that person displays in behavior a level of trust and confidence that generates respect.  If that person is inconsistent, if what that person says is found not to be true, then there is no trust, and without trust there can be no respect.

My sense is that love does make the world go around, but respect is at the fulcrum or that love goes off course.

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LEADERSHIP AS A CRACKED VESSEL!

LEADERSHIP AS A CRACKED VESSEL!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© November 10, 2014

THE PROBLEM WITH THE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE

We have been inundated with the idea of America’s exceptionalism and have taken this abstraction to be unsaleable.  This has often put us at juggernauts with our foreign friends, as well as with world enlightenment and morality.  

Our guiding principles, which may be valid to us as Americans, presuppose that the moral principles embraced by Americans possess both perfect clarity and universal validity.  

It is like saying Christianity is the only valid religion in the world, and its validity is how our specific denomination practices that religion.

Reality demands a different view.  Reality accepts the world as it is, and the peoples of the world as they are, not as this world and these people might or should be. 

Nothing is either/or but “what is.”  

There are good people and bad people in the world, as there is good and evil.  

Human nature is a cracked vessel and it would be well for those in positions of leadership to be aware of this, and to deal with it, not from the perspective that “the leadership has the answers,” but from the awareness that people, for good and bad reasons, behave as they do. 

Nations purport to behave consistent with national interests and their rational character.  As we know from history, as recent as yesterday, nations often behave in conflict with their national interests demonstrating the irrational side of their collective character.

Those who read me know that I have trouble with crusaders, true believers, rabble rousers, and exhibitionists.   Moral crusaders, for example, invariably produce more evil than good.  

Leadership that works is quiet, unobtrusive, prudent and moderate with prudence as its virtue.

Where I differ with authorities on the subject is that the standards of morality for a person and the nation are not in variance, but consistent with each other.    

Again, those who read me know the authority of the individual is primary in terms of promoting one’s own personal best interest, and not sacrificing that interest to another; to be guided by pleasing oneself so that in turn one can be supportive and cooperate with others.  In other words, I am not for turning the other cheek. 

Now, what follows may seem a contradiction but it is looking at the cracked vessel that is leadership.  Once one takes on the responsibility of leading others, once one steps out of the role of personal validation to take on the role of collective validation, one’s duty is to defend and support the interests of others with one’s sense of what is right and wrong.

This does not mean that one is free of moral responsibility but one is now in a servant’s role to promote, protect and sustain the well-being and rights of others.

LEADERSHIP’S CRACKED VESSEL GETS MURKY

Those who rise to leadership roles are invariably ambitions, driven by their demons and perhaps angels of their nature as well.  That said they are nonetheless driven to rise as high and to go as far as their wits and whims will take them.  

The predicate of self-interest is likely to be dominant with the desire to make the right connections, please the right people, curry favorites with people of influence, and always say what such people expect to hear rather than need to know.  So, it has been since the days of the Romans.

One of the fault lines in this strategy is that the matter of interests can become conflicting.  It starts in the microcosm of leadership in the family, company and extends to those in leadership roles in the nation. 

Parents make a fatal error when they think their job is to be “friends” with their children, when the primary job is to guide and direct them to becoming wholesome individuals in their own right independent of parents.

People in leadership roles in companies make the same error, which can color their decision-making, believing their duty is first to the workers when the welfare and survival of the company is the first priority and their basic responsibility.  

The greater magnitude and importance of leadership decisions are to the company’s permanence compared to individual worker happiness.  

This does not mean to exploit workers, which is counterproductive, but to focus on the right things that lead to survival, and to the benefit of everyone, including workers in the end.     

The same exacting moral compass is manifested at the national level.  

Economist Max Weber made the distinction between “ethic of conviction” or intention (“Do the right thing!”) and ethic of responsibility. 

  

Doing the heavy lifting of being a parent, an executive or national leader means differentiating between role demands (“Do the right thing!”) and self-demands (or self-interests and ego drive).

ABSTRACTIONS AS MORAL PRINCIPLES

For at least the past hundred years, moral leadership has been fogged up with an index of high sounding but abstract moral principles.  As they are mentioned here, many reading this will accept them as truism and wonder why they are even in the discussion:

Woodrow Wilson: “The role of the United States is to make the world safe for democracy.”

Allied Leaders of WWI: “This is a Great War to end all wars.”

Woodrow Wilson in WWI and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in WWII: “The only victory is unconditional surrender.”

Several national leaders: “There is no disputing America’s exceptionalism.”

Most Americans: “The President of the United States is the most powerful leader in the world.”

American pundits: “The United States is the lone super power.”

CEO of General Motors in the 1950s: “As General Motors goes so goes the United States.”

Democracy is not for everyone; the "Great War" didn't end all wars, but contributed to WWII; unconditional surrender punishes the adversary which leads to Hitler type tyrants; the idea of exceptionalism is ethnocentric and blinds those so afflicted to reality; the pusillanimity of America's performance in the world in recent years makes "super power" suspect; and GM is on life supports today, and is hardly the destiny of the United States.

Some say we are a country (and a time) intoxicated with abstractions.  We are seemingly divided by a set of moral principles divorced from reality with another set of moral principles derived from reality.  

As pointed out earlier (“Leadership and Toughness: Indigenous to Each Other”), we as a nation have experienced a menu of abstractions as national policy when what is called for are concrete decisions, decisions decided on the basis of how circumstances changed and in the best interest of the United States, not to appease an ally or the appeal of a moral principle.

Diplomat George Kennan claims there are good wars and bad wars, wars that are right consistent with our national best interests and wars that are not.  He had trouble with WWI and the provocations that led to WWII.  Was he wrong?

FDR thought he could charm the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin to live up to the Yalta Agreement that dealt with Eastern Europe after the war, but Stalin did not because he didn’t have to.  

Other presidents before and since have mistaken agreements and arrangements for reality; companies have done the same.  

Indeed, parents have been known to believe because they see their actions to be in the best interest of their children that the children will be so obliged to concur. 

Even the magnanimity of the United States has demonstrated the cracked vessel of leadership.  The Truman Doctrine was designed to give aid to Greece and Turkey after WWII, but became unlimited in scope, purpose and commitment to those who would benefit indiscriminate of need.  Often the aid never reaches the intended because of corruption or interdiction.  

There is no question the American people are a generous people.  Equally true, there is no disputing that the American people at large appreciate the good fortune they have enjoyed during their brief existence of 238 years, which is roughly the equivalent of “The Pax Romana” or the golden period of Rome.

During this period, Rome enjoyed internal order and external peace (27 B.C. – A.D. 180). 

Rome became an imperial melting pot with the implosion of peoples from the East including the Christians.  Indiscriminate wars followed, often wars that could have been avoided, or wars that weren’t in Rome’s best interest.  Meanwhile, Rome itself became plagued with promiscuity, excess, chaos and corruption.  Instead of addressing these problems, Rome became obsessed with its Empire paying little attention to matters at home.   

In the span of a brief three hundred years (A.D. 177-476), Rome declined and fell, followed by a thousand years of what has been called “the Dark Middle Ages" of Europe.    

These sins of this cracked vessel of leadership committed by Rome have become familiar to us in these times with ourselves as well as with our leadership.

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TOUGHNESS AND LEADERSHIP -- INDIGENOUS TO EACH OTHER!

TOUGHNESS AND LEADERSHIP

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© November 8, 2014

A MOTHER’S CONCERN AND HOW IT RELATES TO THE SUBJECT

Sometimes ideas come to me from unsuspecting sources, and yet they kind of settle into my unconscious persistently knocking against my conscious mind insistent to be heard and then expressed.   Invariably, I cannot sleep until these ideas are reduced to words.

Toughness and leadership is such an idea.

Often, consistent with how they come to me, they are expressed in baseball terms "way off in left field," and may seem to have little relevance or relationship to the subject at hand.  The mind is a happy playground which doesn't limit its capacity to think in irrational or terms outside the confinement of logic and rational discourse.  This is such a case.

A mother came to me concerned about her daughter, now in her thirties, who had gone into a bit of a funk since a cherished large promotion she expected didn’t materialize.

The mother explained that her daughter’s co-workers expected her to get the promotion as she was ably qualified in executive skills, problem solving proficiency, keen sense of the competition, ability to rally the troops at hand to meet and exceed the demands of the marketplace, while never leaving her people in the lurch or outside of the purview of what was going on, and most importantly, she made everyone feel a part of the enterprise with no exception.

Then after this impressive endorsement, she said something that surprised me.  “My daughter’s problem since she was a little girl is that she never liked to lose, always liked to be in charge of whatever was going on, and when she wasn’t so involved, she would go off by herself until she cooled down, like she is doing now.” 

The mother had described rather eloquently the attributes of leadership, attributes no leader can be without, along with the obvious concomitant toughness of will that her daughter clearly possesses.  I needed to know more. 

The daughter had cancelled a luncheon engagement with her mother saying she wasn’t good company at the moment.  The mother asked me, “What do you think of that?”

What did I think of that?  What a question! 

Like so many things when people provoke my attention, I could write a book on what was bombarding my senses, but said instead simply, 

“Take her at her word.  She is saying she has too much respect for you to ruin your luncheon in her present mood.” 

That didn’t console this mother, so, I asked the mother to tell me more about her daughter’s situation. 

WHY WE DON’T HAVE LEADERS ANYMORE

The mother’s response was a familiar one.  The job had to be posted to operations across the corporate nation, and someone, not directly familiar with the work or its people, was chosen over her daughter.  

As a consultant, I have seen this device used often with the posting of jobs and finding them ultimately going to the preferred candidate, while giving the impression the process was open, democratic and fair.  It is one of those corporate devices that purports to getting beyond favoritism and biases, giving the impression of objectivity when little or no objectivity is involved.  The twentieth century "old boy network" has clearly not been abandoned in the twenty-first century, only now women are experiencing it as often as men. 

Meanwhile, hopeful candidates believing in "the system," confident that this is an open billing, submit their resumes in good conscience, only to have the review process prove perfunctory.

Once the mother had shared her daughter's situation, I said, 

“Don’t rain on her parade; she is made of the right stuff; had she taken this disappointment philosophically, it would indicate she was acting out of character, given what you have told me about her.”  Then I continued, 

“She will be more energized than ever to find her way to where she thinks she belongs.  She will beat the system at its own game.  So, it has always been with leaders, and she seems to have the constitution of a leader.”

A CRISIS IN CONFIDENCE?

When the mother had left, I thought about the tragic state of leadership in general, and its sad lack of toughness specifically.  

This young lady didn't cave in to the pressure, but retreated into herself until she regained her composure and could move on. 

Leaders don't wail about their setbacks.  Leaders reconfigure their stance and depend on their own counsel.  Alas, where have our leaders gone?   

Instead, we have those in leadership roles becoming spin doctors of the first rank blaming their plight on the competition, making excuses for why they fail in their leadership role, and playing on the sympathies of those dependent upon them for jobs and security.

Given this predicament, we have lost confidence in our leaders in virtually every discipline and institution from the government to the military, from academia to the religious, from commerce to industry, from the personal to the professional.  All seem "out to lunch" as the "buck never stops."

Here in the United States, we just had a midterm election of the US Congress and the US Senate.  No surprise, most of those who have won their races spent the most money, in fact in the neighborhood of a $trillion.  

We don't elect "the best and the brightest," but those who can raise (or have) the most money. Consequently, we get the US Congress and US Senate that we deserve because we devour candidates' television ads as if the Gospel.

To wit, in the State of Florida, the Republican and Democratic Party managed to spend three quarters of a billion dollars, alone.  

Governor Rick Scott spent $12.5 million of his own money on negative television ads against his opponent, Charlie Crist, during the last two weeks before the November 4th election.  This amounted to $1,200 every minute of every day up to the election.  Rick Scott won reelection.   

CEO Mary Barra of General Motors is buried so deep in operational dysfunction that she hardly knows which way to turn, much less which way is up.  Of course, she is where the “buck stops” when it has been passed from CEO to CEO for decades without a break. 

The American culture is so caught up in the game of hype that there is little evidence that anyone is taking charge, which translates into a decisive lack of toughness, that is, taking a moral stand not for political gain but because it is necessary.  

Consequently, when toughness shows its face everyone cowers in confusion or retreat.

Vladimir Putin is a lonely “tough guy” in the current firmament, and no one in the West seems to know what to make of him or to do about him.  His assertiveness, despite what the West would prefer to think, has made him the equivalent of a rock star in his native Russia.  Now, why is that?

Meanwhile, the people of the Ukraine, who are directly suffering the wrath and badgering of Putin, and are looking to the West for support receive rhetoric as no one in the West, leastwise the President of the United States, wants to challenge much less provoke Putin, or to put him in his place.

The more things change the more they remain the same. 

It seems like only yesterday that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin, during the days that led to World War Two, was busy appeasing tough minded Adolf Hitler, who bluffed his way into power, then bullied his way to marching into the Czech Republic and Austria without firing a shot, and then to conquer France in a matter of weeks.  

For this hesitation, this wishful thinking, this appeasement policy, more than 100 million people would perish in that war, most of them collateral damage caught in the middle of the carnage.

Fast forward to the 21^st century, 2014, and the Ukraine has lost Crimea, what is next? 

Americans are like this concerned mother.  Their heart is in the right place.  They want their president to be presidential, to fit their image of him and what they expect, for him not make unnecessary waves, to not put them in harm’s way, but at the same time, to be a dominant presence in the world, to not remind them that there is a world of hurt out there, not only the terrorism of ISSI, the civil war in Syria, the rabble rousing of North Korea, the saber rattling of China, or Putin’s center stage bravado.  

Americans would prefer these and a thousand other troubled spots to be confined to television’s two-minute “breaking news” captions in the comfort of their homes.  It is a fiction that could at any moment burst into a reality, a reality that demands tough minded leadership.    

It seems absurd but nonetheless true.  Americans like to think all these people looking for outside help lack inside toughness and leadership.  Were they only to look in the mirror!

If they did, they would see their lack of confidence in their president is traceable to his inclination to blame the country’s problems, domestic and foreign, on Republican intransigence when he was elected to demonstrate the toughness to penetrate this logjam. 

There are always tough minded and competent people around a president, people who can make a difference, people who have answers.  But like this young lady that was passed over for a job she deserved, they allow themselves to be stymied by the system, cowering with excuses rather than leading.  Sometimes there is an exception.

When the diplomat, George Kennan, wrote a memorandum for the State Department on what became the famous “containment theory” of the Soviet Union, his boss, Ambassador Averell Harriman stopped its circulation in the State Department. 

Kennan published it as “Mr. X” in Foreign Affairs (1947), and as they say, the rest is history.  It was implemented as a political rather than a military solution to Joseph Stalin’s expansionism during the Cold War, and prevented, as historians tend to agree, World War Three.    

Toughness is a word I define as having a center, and with a center comes a moral compass, and with a moral compass comes a resolute determination to be guided by one’s lights as instinct and experience dictates, not allowing oneself to be discouraged from that intuitive path by prevailing crowd hysteria.  It also describes leadership, a leadership that emanates from within and is not a slave to a party, profession, discipline, special interests or polls or, indeed, the established norms.  

*     *     *

"SEARCH FOR THE REAL PARENTS OF MY SOUL!" The Social Psychological Odyssey Continues

SEARCH FOR THE REAL PARENTS OF MY SOUL

The Social Psychological Odyssey Continues

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

November 4, 2014

ORAL LAW GAINS ACCEPTANCE

The theory of the “oral law” was accepted only gradually. 

“The theory of an authoritative law (which might be taught independently of the Scriptures) was altogether too new to be unhesitatingly accepted … the theory was too startling and novel to be unconditionally accepted” (Lauterbach, 1951).

The greatest opposition to the so-called “oral law” came from the priests, who, as a whole, declared that the Scripture was the only necessary code of laws to obey.

“This apparently simple solution offered by the priestly group in the Sanhedrin did not find favor with the lay member of that body” (Lauteerbach, 1951).

And, with the passage of time, the lay teachers ultimately came to constitute the majority of representatives in the Sanhedrin.  These Pharisaic lay teachers succeeded in convincing the people that they were right and that the priests were wrong.

Some of the people’s fears concerning the priestly Sadducees were apparently valid.  Many of the priests did become worldly minded and they found worldly politics far more interesting than religion.

The Sadducees eventually adopted the belief that there was no resurrection and that angels did not exist (Acts of the Apostles 23:8).  This was probably a result of the influence of the Greek Epicurean philosophy.  It taught that there was no future life of any kind, and that man should therefore seek as many physical pleasures in this life as possible, since that was all there was.

NEW LAWS OF THE PHARISEES

Many of the Pharisees came to believe what they were doing was God’s will.  “It is certain that they (the Pharisees) regarded themselves as the successors of the prophets, and not merely in fact but by right as well (Herford, 1933).

Based on this claim of authority, they adopted a method of teaching what they believed to be Laws of God, without any initial reference to the Scriptures for authority.  “Finding no convincing proof for such laws in the Bible, they taught them independently of scriptural proof, i.e., in the Mishnah-form” (Lauterbach, 1951).

Mishnah-form was the name given for laying down laws to be observed, apart from the Scriptures.  This is not to say that Mishnah-form avoided Scripture references altogether.  But it was only after a law had already been accepted that the Scriptures might be checked for corroboration.  Sometimes, it seems, “affirmation” of a new law was forced from the Scriptures totally unrelated to the particular subject.

The word Mishnah is related to the Hebrew root word meaning “second” and “study.”  Mishnah-form was the second form that the Pharisees adopted for “study” as opposed to the original form of properly expounding the Scriptures, which was called “Midrash-form.”  This older, original form was known as “teaching after the manner of Moses” (Talmud, 1963).

 Midrash-form is based on deducing laws, teachings, legends, etc., from the Scriptures.  As time went on it too became perverted.  Lauterbach writes:

“Whenever there was the remotest possibility of doing so, they would seek by means of new hermeneutical rules (rules pertaining to Biblical interpretation) to find in the words of the Torah support for these traditional laws” (1951).

Thus the Pharisees were able to “find” the traditions they were now approving of by twisted interpretations of Scripture.  In doing this, they still claimed to be using the Midrash-form.  Ezra is said to have taught in Midrash-form when he, and his helpers “read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8).  There was, however, one major point which Ezra was aware, but which the Pharisees missed.   It is this:

God, in the Bible, never contradicts Himself.  Malachi, a contemporary of Ezra was inspired to write: “For I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6). 

But many of the traditional laws the Pharisees approved of did contradict Scripture.  What is more, many of them even contradicted one another.

With the introduction of the new Mishnah-form, Scripture came to be less relied on than before.  New laws, which were not even necessarily traditional, could be enacted.  For the Pharisees found the Mishnah-form to be an important weapon in their conflict with the Sadducees.  Laws that were accepted after being handed down in the Mishnah-form tended to enhance the authority of the Pharisees, since it was solely on their authority that the law was accepted. 

The very first individual of whom we have any record who began to teach new commandments in the Mishnah-form, apart from the Scriptural basis, was Jose ben Joezer of Zareda.  Jose laid down three new commandments. 

The first concerned the eating of a certain locust (no less);

The second, the blood of slaughtered animals; and

The third, the touching of a dead body. 

In doing this, he became known as “Jose, the Permitter” (Talmud, 1963), evidently because all three decisions “he permitted” were things that had been formerly considered forbidden (Lauterbach, 1951).

These new laws of Jose were not customs of the people inherited from Hellenism.  “It is therefore evident that these Halakot (rules) … were not older traditional law transmitted by Jose as a mere witness, but Jose’s own personal teachings.  He was one who ‘permitted’ and he deserved the name (the Permitter).” (Lauterbach, 1951)

These commandments, then, of themselves were not earth shaking violations of Jewish law, but they did set a new precedence.  Eventually, others began to set down all sorts of new laws.  Jesus came to call them “the commandments of men,” not God (Mark &:7).

THE PROSBUL OF HILLEL

Many others ultimately followed in the steps of Jose.  If the majority of Pharisees agreed on a new decision, it was accepted as the “Word of God” even if Scripture taught just the opposite.

Of the myriad of new laws laid down, perhaps the best example of this is the “Prosbul of Hillel.”  Hillel the old, headed a Pharisaic school in the days of Herod.  He was noted for his gentleness and was greatly beloved among the people, but his decisions nonetheless were not always in keeping with the “Word of God.”

For instance, “All private loans are automatically remitted at the end of the Sabbatical Year" (Deuteronomy 15:2).  

Hence it became difficult to obtain loans immediately before the onset of that year.  In order to avoid hardship and encourage lending, Hillel instituted the Prosbul (Greek, meaning “for the court”), which in a declaration made before a court of law by the creditor, and signed by witnesses, stating that all debts due him are given over to the court for collection.

Since the remission of loans during the seventh year applies only to individuals but not to public loans, the effect of the Prosbul was to render the individual’s loan public, and it was therefore not remitted.” (Werblowsky and Wigoder, 1955)

Hillel’s motive was apparently quite practical.  And yet the Bible clearly states, “Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, the seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest his nought; and he cry unto the Lord (Eternal God) against thee, and it be sin unto thee.” (Deuteronomy 15:9)

It was because of rules like the Prosbul that Christ told the Pharisees, “Thus have you made the commandments of God of one effect by your tradition.” (Mathew 15:6)

Hillel saw that the poor were unable to obtain needed loans and were trying to remedy the situation, but he was not doing it God’s way:

“Trust in the Eternal with all thine heart; and loan not unto thine own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5)

There were of course many such instances where the Pharisees enacted many new laws based solely on their own human reasoning in an attempt to make what they thought would be a better way of life.  Yet God tells us, 

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the ends therefore are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25)

A PRIORI

The Pharisees’ error was a classic one.  Seeing wrong situations but relying solely on themselves, they attempted to treat the effect rather than the cause, something that haunts us to the present day

Take note of the case of Hillel’s Prosbul.  God plainly tells us that the cause of the problem was in the hearts of the people. (Deuteronomy 15:9)

Speaking parenthetically, today too many see the problems besetting mankind from a solution perspective without the necessity of clearly defining the problem.  Governments have their solutions at the ready, as do revolutionary movement.  All attempts are only to treat the effects of the problem while the cause of the problem gets scant or no attention. 

None get at the real cause which is to be found in the motives of men.  To uncover these motives is no easy task as these motives are often in conflict with each other, or an open war between the head and the heart. 

And so to get at the real cause it would be well to examine “the tilt of the social landscape”:

“There is probably no better way of gauging the nature of a society than by finding the direction in which ambition and talent flow.” (Hoffer, 1968)

God’s Law as revealed in the Scripture could be summed up by the word, Love – Love first of all toward God and then towards one’s fellowman, but above all, towards God.  That is why Jesus came to be called, “the last Christian.” (Kaufmann, 1955)

God’s Law shows us exactly how he would live if He were a human being.  This is precisely what Jesus attempted to do when he emptied himself of his divinity and took on human flesh, giving evidence in the process of never once violating a single of God’s Laws.

The rise of the Pharisees in the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament represents an attempt on the part of the people to keep the Law.  They lacked a clear understanding of their own human nature as revealed in the Scripture.  Notice God’s deeply felt near lament in Deuternomy 5:29:

“O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever!”

But, of course, such a heart was not in them at the time.  They had the human nature that we all naturally possess, the heart that is … “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?” (Jerimiah 17:9) 

Joshua told his generation:

“…Yet cannot serve the Lord…” (Joshua 24:19)

To serve the Lord Joshua was saying was simply not in the people’s nature, nor is it apparently in ours.

That said man was not left without hope.  There was a promise of better things to come.  “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.” (Deuteronomy 30:6)

The Pharisees as well as the other sects of the period wanted to serve God and keep His commandments.  They has, as the Apostle Paul (who well knew) put it, “… a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” (Romans 10:2)

Not aware of the necessity for a chance in their own human nature, they found it necessary to change God’s Law.  Not that this was done outwardly, but rather by forced interpretation, rationalization, attempted codification of laws that were all encompassing; new laws that were not admitted to be new, but old laws made refreshingly comprehensible.

By changing the Law they made it of “none effect,” that is to say, it did not have the effect necessarily that God’s Law should have had on those who would keep it.

Inasmuch as the Pharisees did keep some of the law correctly some of the time, it did have some good effects.  The overall results that come by living in total harmony with the law the Creator set in motion simply were lacking.  Pharisaic society did not abound with the love of God.  You could never convince the Sadducees (with whom they often were in dispute) that it was otherwise.  

Nor could you convince the Romans.  Nor, indeed, could you convince the unlearned Jews of that day whom many of the Pharisees thumbed their noses at with the epithet “am-ha-aretz” (people of the land).  The term is used in a derogatory sense throughout the Pharisaic writings after today’s term “redneck,” meaning uncouth, ignorant and crude. 

Pharisaic society was filled with strife.  When Alexander Jannaeus, a Maccabean king, ruled, the Pharisees were virtually at war with him and there was much bloodshed. 

The Talmud itself is a record of the Pharisees striving among themselves, one with another in religious debates, each one trying to convince the other of the correctness of a particular view or idea, rather than all working together harmoniously to seek God’s will.

Today, professed Christians are treading down tht same well worn path that the Pharisees once took.  Writers, such as Nietzsche are being given more than cursory attention.  On the one hand, where is the sect that has not attempted to read its own ideas into the Bible which it professes to obey?

Where is the denomination that is truly bearing the fruits of God’s Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, virtue, temperance?  In fact, given the struggle and the deception, does any single sect know what true love is?

A word of caution before moving on.  The century and one half before the birth of Jesus the Christ religion was in total turmoil.  More than anything the period displayed a need for a change in the human heart.  This is precisely what Christ insisted was his mission, the reason he came into the world, and what he came to offer.

As we continue to follow the Weberian model of organization, it might be remembered that the sociologist held the view that there is rarely a close relationship between social location and material interests when it comes to the articulation of religious ideas.  Part of the reason is that much of the content of the theology during the inception period is fluid and often contaminated with spurious contradictions.  Despite these inconsistencies supporters of the ideas are likely to fight to the death in their defense.   

Those not inclined to religion or religious beliefs find this frustratingly incomprehensible failing to understand that religious ideas are generally derived from purely religious sources.  Weber writes:

“It is not our thesis that the specific nature of a religion is a simple ‘function’ of th social stratum which appears as its characteristic bearer, or that it represents the stratum’s ‘ideology,’ or that it is a ‘reflection’ of a stratum’s material or ideal interest-situation.  On the contrary, a more basic misunderstanding or the standpoint of these discussions would hardly be possible.  However, incisive the social influences, economically and politically determined, may have been upon a religious ethic in a particular case, it receives its stamp primarily from religious sources, and, first of all, from the content of its annunciation and its promise” (Gerth and Mills, 1948).

The assertion made here that a religion is not just a reflection of a stratum’s material or ideal interest-situation is cautionary for the student of sociology.  Much as there is to be learned from this there is the ideological flow which would seem a force outside such limitations.  This rather long summary of the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament is consistent with Max Weber, and a necessary foundation for that which is to follow.

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NEXT: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW TESTAMENT – THE ROMAN EMPIRE!